The Senate Judiciary Committee approved President Joe Biden’s selection for a North Carolina seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, as the state’s Republican senators threaten to drop the nomination.
Ryan Park’s nomination advanced 11-10 on Thursday, without support from the Republican Party, after committee member Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) again lashed out over the White House vetting for the Raleigh seat.
Tillis said he and fellow Republican Sen. Ted Budd of North Carolina had put forward four potential candidates, including a magistrate judge with a Democratic background, but that the White House had rejected all the choices.
White House spokesman Andrew Bates said the administration conducted an “extensive consultation process” with Tillis and Budd.
The nomination of Park, North Carolina’s attorney general, now heads to the Senate, where Democrats are racing to confirm as many of Biden’s remaining judicial selections as possible before the clock runs out on their majority in January. Park is one of more than two dozen pending nominations for district and circuit courts.
The Senate also voted 49-44 on Thursday to end debate over Embry Kidd’s nomination to the Eleventh Circuit. A confirmation vote was scheduled for November 18.
Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) also filed motions to end debate over court selections that have drawn conservative criticism. They include Mustafa Kasubhai for the Oregon District, Sarah Russell for the Connecticut District and Rebecca Pennell for the Eastern District of Washington.
Democrats had withdrawn the procedural vote on Kasubhai in June due to attendance problems with their narrow majority.
Competing stories
Unlike district court selections, circuit court picks do not require support from the home state senator to advance to the floor. Some Republican senators have openly complained about the White House deliberation over the appellate nominations.
Tillis, who said Park has “no prayer” to be confirmed in the absence of Republican votes when he comes up for consideration, expressed dissatisfaction with the White House process earlier this year.
He revived the matter Thursday, just before the commission voted on Park. Tillis said that after the White House rejected the potential nominees he put forward with Budd, the administration then forwarded four of its own names. The list included Cheri Beasley, Budd’s Democratic challenger in the 2022 Senate race, who Tillis said previously served as chief justice of the state Supreme Court.
Bates said the White House consultation was “much greater than” what Democrats got during President-elect Donald Trump’s first term, when Senate Republicans dropped the home state legislature’s “blue slip” approval for career choices . This allowed Trump to appoint judges in states with two Democratic senators, regardless of whether they approved the president’s choices or not.
A source familiar with the process behind Park’s nomination said the White House began its consultations with Republican senators in January, when Judge James Wynn announced his plans to semi-retire. That lasted until July 3, when the White House announced Park’s appointment.
The process included forwarding his own picks to senators and interviewing and reviewing data from the candidates the two Republicans put forward, the source said.
The White House also agreed to delay the process for Tillis and Budd to create a new judicial selection committee in February, one that would recommend candidates for the vacancy.
This is despite the fact that “no such committee had been used to fill the vacancy in the Fourth Circuit that had arisen under the previous administration.” The committee did not interview any candidates assigned by the White House, the source said.
When asked about the competing narratives after the vote, Tillis told reporters he “doesn’t care what the White House has to say” after forwarding Budd’s 2022 Democratic challenger as the candidate.
Floor dynamics
Tillis won’t reveal to reporters the names of colleagues he’s convinced will reject Park’s nomination because if Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) “brings it up, he’ll know.”
“That’s all that matters to me,” he added later.
Democrats control the chamber 51-49. Sen. Joe Manchin (IW.Va.) previously pledged to vote against nominees who do not have Republican support. But he told reporters Wednesday that he has reversed that decision and will instead look to see whether some nominees would receive bipartisan support under normal circumstances but not because of election year politics. He voted against Kidd’s cloture vote on Thursday.
Trump has demanded that Senate Republicans not allow Democrats to “ram through” any more of Biden’s legal picks since he won the Nov. 5 election.
Republican Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine, who turned against Trump this week after Biden’s judicial confirmations, each voted no to advance Kidd.
